Ford Fiesta RS ‘not in the plan’

The rumoured Ford Fiesta RS is not happening, according to the head engineer of Ford Performance division.

Speaking to CarAdvice at the launch of the new Ford Focus RS, Tyrone Johnson, Ford Performance’s chief engineer and head of vehicles, confirmed that there’s no Fiesta RS in the pipeline.

“In terms of Fiesta RS, I have seen some comments from senior Ford people that it’s definitely not in the plan. Typically we don’t talk about future products but in that particular one there has been some comments that it’s definitely not in the plan.”

The high performance Fiesta was meant to sit above the current Fiesta ST and be roughly the same price as the larger Focus ST. Rumours to date had suggested the car would use the same 1.6-litre engine as the ST but with an uprated turbo and different suspension tuning.

The confirmation that the Fiesta RS is not on the agenda means that there are still seven models left for Ford Performance division to unveil before 2020, as part of its confirmed 12 cars before 2020 schedule (Fiesta ST, Focus ST, Focus RS, Mustang GT350R and GT supercar being the ones unveiled to date).

The additional seven vehicles are likely to include other models on the C1 platform (as used on the Ford Focus and its RS variant), considering the engineering work in the AWD system has already been carried out. That would suggest a performance version of the Ford Kuga would be likely.

As for other models, the potential for performance variants of Ranger (and maybe Everest) and Mondeo would seem to be very much on the cards.

We would suspect that there’s also the likelihood of even more hardcore versions of the Mustang in the near future.